Eminem will "relapse" twice this year, he has announced. The rapper returns from a five-year silence with two new albums, Relapse and Relapse 2, due before the end of 2009.
"A lot of people were expecting Relapse to drop last year. I was one of them," Eminem said in a statement. "Then [producer Dr Dre] and I went back in the studio in September for a few days, and that turned into six months."
The first Relapse will be released on 19 May, with the re-Relapse to be issued in the second half of the year.
Eminem's last studio album was 2004's Encore, with which he claimed to have retired. Relapse was first hinted at during promotion for The Way I Am, an autobiography released last year. "I've been recording the new album mainly in the crib," he told Billboard. " It's like the old days, only there's a lot more than a rusty four-track in my basement."
With Dr Dre, Eminem wasn't just messing about in the cellar. "We were on such a roll," he said in his statement. "We wound up with a ton of new music produced by Dre. Putting out Relapse 2 will let everyone get all of the best stuff."
The albums' first single, Crack A Bottle, leaked in December. Although the official release later broke digital sales records, Eminem was not initially very pleased. "It's like someone catches you peeping in your window before you got the Spider-Man costume all zipped up!" he told Rolling Stone.
